Why Figure Could Be One of Crypto’s Most Undervalued Stocks

Crypto has spent years promising that blockchain technology would eventually make financial markets cheaper, faster, and more efficient.

Figure may finally be offering investors a way to test that thesis.

The numbers from the quickly growing financial player have been increasingly difficult to ignore. Marketplace volumes grew 130% year over year. Revenue rose 95%.

And yet, Fundstrat Head of Digital Asset Strategy Sean Farrell thinks Wall Street may still be valuing Figure more like a traditional lender rather than the blockchain-powered capital-markets marketplace it's trying to become. That could be an opportunity.

Farrell puts Figure at the top of his list of companies "that leverage the blockchain to improve their operating margins and increase growth".

The company has its roots in lending, particularly home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs. But Farrell thinks viewing Figure merely as another lender misses what the business is becoming.

"They're essentially building a blockchain-based version of, you can think of it as like a Fannie Mae for parts of the credit market that I think agencies would never touch," Farrell said in a new Coinage interview.

The basic idea is relatively straightforward. Figure can turn a loan into a standardized digital asset when it is created and then operate the marketplace where that asset trades. That is a very different business from simply originating loans. And the distinction could matter enormously for Figure's valuation.